In 1977 he was ­arrested for fraud and to avoid jail he joined an undercover FBI operation called Abscam, short for Arab Scam.

The sting ­involved fake sheikhs and ­offers to invest oil billions in US hotels and casinos.

It provided the plot for American Hustle.

Wily Weinberg was so convincing as a middle man for the “sheikhs” that he persuaded corruptible congressmen, mayors, and city officials to take bribes for approving gambling licences and dodgy contracts.

But the glib operator was also a deceiver in love.

He betrayed his wife by ­bedding his secretary then cheated on her with an English mistress, played by Amy Adams in the film, whose fake ­aristocratic credentials helped his cons.

Weinberg, now in ­fading health in his late 80s, lives alone in a Florida ­retirement estate.

Hitler forger

He hand-wrote 60 volumes of the diaries on aged, tea-soaked paper, claiming they were recovered from a plane that crashed in 1945 carrying the Fuhrer’s effects to his Berchtesgarden retreat.

German magazine Stern paid £2.5million for the fakes in 1983 and the Sunday Times did a deal to run them.

But the “scoop of the century” quickly made the paper a laughing stock when it was realised they were full of historical mistakes.

Hitler supposedly wrote: “My stormtroopers are such a splendid body of men” and “Ha! Ha! Isn’t it laughable?” about a plot to kill him.

Sunday Times owner Rupert Murdoch carried out an editorial purge.

In 1985 Kujau, above, was jailed for four and a half years for fraud and forgery.

He died in 2000, aged 62.

WireImage

Catch Me If You Can: Frank Abagnale

Fake AM pilot

FRANK ABAGNALE: Immortalised by the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can, this high-flying faker convinced Pan Am he was a pilot – aged just 16.

He started by phoning the airline pretending his uniform had been stolen and was directed to a New York tailor who kitted him out on the firm’s account.

With logos taken from a model airplane kit, he forged an ID card, added grey dye to his hair – and suddenly became First Officer Abagnale.

For two years he jetted around the world as a “staff passenger” staying at hotels, cashing cheques and bedding air stewardesses.

Several times he was invited to take over the controls of airliners.

By the time he was 21 he had also worked as a doctor, lawyer and sociology professor while conning banks, airlines and hotels out of nearly £2million.

He was jailed several times in the 1970s, where he once got special privileges by convincing his warden he was an undercover cop.

Abagnale now advises firms on white-collar crime – and is a genuine millionaire.

Prayers and sex

JIM BAKKER: More than 12million viewers tuned in each week to watch this TV evangelical preacher.

But what they didn’t know was that by the mid-1980s Bakker was raking in £100million a year in donations – and kept much of the cash for himself.

His show was an extraordinary double-act of syrupy sweetness and light featuring the preacher and his mascara-daubed wife Tammy, below.

Bakker not only ran the Praise The Lord evangelical TV station but also owned a theme park, hotels and shopping centres.

One day his devoted flock were horrified to discover he had taken his church secretary Jessica Hahn to a Florida hotel, drugged her and had sex with her – then said a short prayer.

In 1987 he was jailed for 45 years and fined £300,000 after his fraud was exposed by rival TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart – who himself was subsequently unmasked as a regular user of prostitutes.

Recluse scam

CLIFFORD IRVING: When publishers were offered an autobiography of reclusive oil billionaire Howard Hughes they jumped at the chance.

Fraudster Irving told book firm McGraw-Hill that “Mr Hughes will speak only to me” and they paid him a £600,000 advance.

But the book was a work of fiction by Irving, an author living in Ibiza who was cobbling it together from previous biographies and press cuttings.

He never had a chance to finish it because in 1971 Hughes, inset above, came out of seclusion to denounce the “autobiography” as a fraud.

Irving and wife Edith, above, who had salted the cash in her Swiss bank account, were jailed for two years.

Irving wrote another book in prison, this time about his con trick.

The death of Hughes in 1976 helped make it a best seller.

Alpha

Cheriegate: Peter Foster

Cheriegate villain

PETER FOSTER: In his most daring enterprise, the “Wily Wizard of Oz” befriended Cherie Blair to flog dodgy diet pills to British schoolkids.

Manipulative Foster bedded Cherie’s trusted “lifestyle guru” Carole Caplin to get close to the Prime minister and his wife.

He wanted Tony Blair’s support for a “healthy diet” plan for schoolchildren – on the back of which he planned to peddle his diet pills.

The enterprise collapsed in 2002 amid a political scandal when newspapers revealed the convicted conman acted as Cherie’s financial adviser in a property deal.

He flattered Cherie and massaged her self-esteem, assuring her in emails: “Your pleasure is my purpose.”

She described him as “a star” and said: “We are on the same wavelength, Peter.”

When his dealings were exposed he hot-footed it back Down Under.

Foster began his life of crime as a schoolboy selling fake watches.

He graduated to insurance fraud before arriving in Britain in 1986 to launch the “miracle” slimming aid Bai Lin Tea.

It made millions, aided by the publicity surrounding his girlfriend Sam Fox.

Further dodgy diet products were launched. Even in jail for fraud he conned warders and convicts out of cash.

Foster, 51, is thought to be hiding out in the Pacific islands to avoid a three-year jail term in Australia for yet another diet pill scam.

Artful Dodger

TOM KEATING: This struggling artist fooled the art world by forging 2,500 paintings – including works by Rembrandt, Goya, Constable, Turner, Gainsborough and Renoir.

The Londoner, pictured here painting a Van Gogh sunflowers, spent 25 years making his “Sefton Blakes” – rhyming slang for fakes – because he was angry at how painters were treated by the art establishment.

He said: “I wanted to teach unscrupulous dealers a lesson. They’re just East End blokes in West End suits.”

X-rays would have revealed he wrote “fake” on every canvas before painting over it.

His master brushwork was discovered in 1977 but he escaped prison because of ill health.

He died in 1983 shortly after his talent was finally recognised when 150 of his paintings were sold at a London auction for £100,000.

Circus trickster

PHINEAS T BARNUM: This 19th century conman believed “there’s a sucker born every minute” and proved it by carrying out on hoaxes on the American public.

He first ran a Broadway sideshow then a fairground and finally the famous Barnum and Bailey Circus, labelled “the greatest show on earth”.

Barnum, left, started small with a flea circus.

He then added “the horse with its tail where its head should be” (an ordinary horse tethered back to front) and “the world’s only cherry coloured cat” (a black cat which he said was the colour of black cherries).

He bought a herd of “white elephants” – fine until rain washed the paint off.

His most famous creature “the last mastodon” was an elephant called Jumbo.